The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather McGhee broke me down in ways I wasn’t prepared for. It’s one thing to know racism is destructive, but it’s another to sit with the reality that people will actively harm themselves just to ensure people of color don’t benefit. That’s not just cruel, it’s self-sabotage on a national scale, and it’s exhausting to realize how deep that rot goes
Five Midnights by Ann Dávila Cardinal could have been a fascinating supernatural mystery set against the backdrop of Puerto Rico, but instead, it ends up feeling like a messy pile of privilege, colorism, and bad character work.
Piñata by Leopoldo Gout is a fantastic grotesque horror steeped in Indigenous lore. This was a genuinely terrifying read, dripping with atmosphere and imagery that burrows under your skin.
With an atmosphere is thick, unsettling, and dripping with unease, Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia is the kind of book that crawls under your skin and refuses to leave.
Picture this: You finally move into the perfect house with your new husband, except it’s haunted…by his ex-wife… and everyone gaslights you about it. The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas takes the classic haunted house trope and drapes it in the rich texture of a gothic nightmare set in post-independence Mexico.
Taking well-known concepts and stories and breathing new life into them is a concept that I absolutely rock with and Silvia Moreno-Garcia shows a great a talent for it in The Daughter of Doctor Moreau
Delilah Green Doesn’t Care by Ashley Herring Blake feels like watching a sapphic Hallmark movie, but more human and with a sharper edge. The titular main character fits the cookie-cutter “big city girl” trope.
I went into City of Bones with mild curiosity, as I know people that have been really into the series years. What I got was… mixed. On the surface, it’s a decent urban fantasy. There’s hidden societies, demon-hunting, and secret bloodlines. But then it leans hard into that Special Girl Trope. The main character who discovers she’s not ordinary at all but actually super important and central to everything. Sometimes I can roll with it. I’m a Buffy guy! But here? It felt tired and predictable.
Grr, arg! I grew up on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and was SO ready to jump back into the universe with a new entry. In Every Generation by Kendare Blake had such an exciting premise: bringing the Slayer mythos into a new era with a fresh spin. The story takes place nearly two decades after end of season 7 of BtVS and follows Frankie, Willow’s daughter, a witch and somehow the new Slayer.
Middle books in trilogies are tricky. You’ve got to carry the momentum of book one while setting up the last book, and One Girl in All the World definitely leans into that “middle book” energy.